Retail Asia 2018 RA September.October 2018 (Online) | Page 19

NEWS
Courts Asia welcomes new group COO
FURNITURE retailer Courts Asia
Limited, together with its subsidiaries,
recently announced the appointment of
Dominic Wong as group chief operating
officer (COO), effective from 15
October. He will assume group COO
responsibilities from Stan Kim, who has
taken on group COO responsibilities
in addition to his existing portfolio as
group chief innovation officer (CIO)
since February this year.
Commenting on the new
appointment, Courts Asia’s executive
director and group chief executive
officer Terence Donald O’Connor
said: “Concurrent to our Malaysia
transformation seeing early indicators
of success, we are pleased to welcome
accomplished retail veteran Dominic
Wong to Courts to continue the
momentum and lead the business
to a new steady state. His wealth of
retail experience in the fast-moving
consumer goods sector as well as in
business re-engineering makes him an
ideal candidate for the role. We look
forward to Dominic reinvigorating our
commercial strategies in the market.”
O’Connor added: “Whilse Dominic
will contribute in a regional capacity and
drive best practices across the group, his
immediate priority will be our Malaysian
business. Stan, group CIO, remains
within the business and will work closely
with Dominic to ensure a smooth
transition for the country operations
whilse continuing to support the
transformation work.”
Wong has more than 20
years of retail experience
and held C-level positions
at publicly-listed
multi-billion-dollar
corporations in Australia,
China, Hong Kong and
Singapore, with his most
recent position being
managing director
of AS Watson
Group since
2017, where he
turned around
a leading retail
business in
Hong Kong,
according to
Courts.
He will
initially be
primarily-based
in Malaysia and
is tasked with the
strategic and operational transformation
of the business amid changes in the
market’s regulatory landscape. Wong
said: “I am honoured to join Courts, an
established retail brand in the region.
It is an exciting time for retail which is
undergoing rapid change and disruption.
I look forward to building upon the
momentum of the transformation work
in Malaysia, and playing a critical role
within the regional executive team to
take Courts Asia to greater heights.”
With Wong on board, Kim
will fully focus on the regional CIO
portfolio and work across Courts’
markets of operation to
accelerate the group’s
digitalisation efforts and
e-commerce capabilities
regionally whilse
continuing to oversee
critical workstreams
of the group’s
transformation. ra
Dominic Wong as group
chief operating officer
(COO), effective from 15
October.
Singapore bookstore sells bricks to
secure a permanent home
AS part of its 2018 fundraising
campaign to build a permanent
retail space, BooksActually — an
independent bookstore in Singapore
— is selling unique bricks for S$50
(US$36).
Measuring 21 x 27 x 73mm,
each palm-sized brick is individually
handmade by the bookstore’s staff.
On BooksActually’s website, the store
stated: “Over the past 13 years, we
have struggled with sky-high rentals
and a challenging book business
environment. But on the flip side,
we have also grown BooksActually
and run it decently well. To continue
to do what we are doing, we have
decided to buy a place of our own
so that our books and cats can roam
free.”
After the money is raised,
customers can sign the bricks they
bought and hand them over to the
new store to be mounted in the
permanent space “for all eternity
as a testament to [the purchasers’]
dedication to Singapore literature”.
Kenny Leck, founder of
BooksActually, said in a video that
the best way to continue running the
bookstore is to own a commercial
property, a move which he described
as “the biggest leap ever”. He
explained: “There’s a lot of money
involved and to be honest, selling
books alone is definitely not enough
for us to earn, raise and save that
amount of money [needed] for us
to make the leap. So, we came up
with this idea of the BooksActually
Shophouse Fund.”
Produced at ceramic studio Mud
Rock Ceramics, slight variations in
size and make are to be expected
for each brick. The bricks can be
purchased at www.booksactuallyshop.
com/products/booksactually-
shophouse-fund-50-brick.
As of September this year, the
bookstore said it “still got a long way
to go” in its fundraising efforts. ra
Retail Asia September/October 2018
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